- Note - This is a brilliant article by an American. It
points out a number of the holes in the many excuses offered by the left,
and some of the blacks themselves for their failures in post-colonial Africa.
-Jan
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- Success And Culture.net c. 2004 Brian Thomas
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- Africa is the poorest place in the world. Outside of
South Africa and the Arab countries to the north the average African makes
$1,000 a year while the worldwide average is over $6,500. This poverty
has not gone unnoticed and it does not lack for explanations. We all know
that the only accepted explanation for African poverty is to say that it
is caused by the lingering effects of colonialism. This is the only explanation
a public figure can speak of without having his career and reputation intentionally
destroyed. That does not make it true.
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- The origin of this school of thought goes back to the
Indian independence movement and to Lenin. It is hard to overstate the
importance of Gandhi and the Indian independence movement to Third World
thought and to modern thinking on the Third World. Ideas from this movement
have become so common that we don't think of them as having a specific
source. The original source of the 'blame colonialism' school was Dadabhai
Naoroji, a Parsi and founding member of the Indian National Congress. Naoroji
examined trade records and found that India's exports exceeded its imports
by a substantial margin and used this as the basis for what became known
as the "Drain Theory." He also claimed that the British had misused
India's tax revenue in building railroads instead of irrigation systems.
It was his belief that the railroads served only to increase India's exports
to the benefit of the British and not to serve the Indian people. He believed
a system of irrigation canals would have improved food production and thus
helped the Indian people. Naoroji wrote this in the late 19th century while
India was undergoing a horrible string of famines. His ideas were picked
up by R.C. Dutt whose "Economic History of India" had an enormous
influence on Gandhi, who in turn influenced everyone.
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- Today we are still left with the influence of Naoroji's
belief that the British were draining India and structuring its economy
to promote exports rather than the needs of the people. I'm sure the last
part of that sentence sounded familiar, as you have probably heard it in
a thousand different forms. Naoroji was a good and kind man and in no way
anti-British. He is famous for calling British rule of India "Un-British"
in the sense of not being consistent with the honesty and fairness of the
British people. His most famous writing is a sort of balance sheet summing
up the pros and cons of British rule and in it the pros outweigh the cons.
If each year he grew less fond of the British it is because each year he
had to hear them say India was no closer to being ready for independence.
Regardless of his personal fairness, he gave birth to a school of thought
which has evolved into something unfair and his belief that directing the
economy toward exports is a mistake has done great damage to a Third World
which is passionate in its hatred of promoting exports.
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- The second source of current thinking on Third World
poverty, and therefore African poverty is Lenin's theory of Imperialism.
This is slightly odd to anyone who actually knows what Lenin said on the
topic. Lenin was the most creative member of his movement and what he excelled
at was in creating excuses for the failure of Marxist theory. Only Nixon
could go to China and only Lenin could invent the New Economic Period.
Lenin's theory of Imperialism was an explanation for why the economic collapse
predicted by Marx never occurred. Marx believed that under capitalism workers
would never receive more than subsistence wages and all profits would go
to the capitalists. Eventually the capitalists would have more money than
they could spend and the economy would collapse and then the workers would
take over. This never happened. Lenin claimed that Marx had not taken into
account the effect of overseas colonies. Lenin believed that capitalists
were taking the money they could not spend and investing it in the colonies.
This was supposedly keeping the economic collapse from occurring. He claimed
that if the colonies became independent and stopped accepting outside investments
capitalism would finally collapse.
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- This theory of Imperialism is the reason why in the 1960's
so many newly independent states banned foreign investment. They thought
it would make us collapse, not them. They were wrong. The reason I find
it odd that so many Third World countries believe in Lenin's ideas is that
Lenin believed foreign investment was promoting economic development in
the colonies and they believe in the opposite. The Third World has taken
Lenin's hatred of foreign investment and Naoroji's milder antipathy towards
promoting exports and combined them into a bastard child which hates both
investments and exports. In other words, the Third World hates the two
things which give it the best chance of economic growth.
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- This bastard child may have a strong influence in the
rest of the world, but it owns Africa lock, stock and barrel. These ideas
have grown in their virulent hatred of the industrialized countries as
the years have gone by. One would have thought that Walter Rodney's "How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa," would have been the peak, but recent
ideas about how the CIA created AIDS show that this trend in blaming the
outside world continues to grow. The question is then, did Europe underdevelop
Africa?
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- The most important and therefore controversial part of
answering that question is discussing how advanced Africa was before the
coming of Europeans. The answer is that they did not know how to write,
read, plow, or make a wheel. It is not hard to prove that Africa was not
in an equally advanced state before colonialism and the slave trade. With
the exception of the ruins of the Great Zimbabwe, whose origin is unclear,
everything pointed to in order to prove of African advancement is from
a region of Arab influence. This is an unspeakably emotional issue for
some people, but the facts are clear regardless of the emotions involved.
Two to three thousand years ago West Africans entered the Iron Age and
developed iron spears and hoes. They used this to move beyond the hunter-gatherer
stage the Bushmen remained in until recently and became farmers and herders
of cattle. Bantu's from Cameroon took this technology and conquered the
rest of black Africa. Regardless of the beauty of their crafts or whatever
other merits African culture had, they did not have plows and worked the
land with hoes. This was a simple existence and it continued in each part
of black Africa until colonization
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- If Africa was not economically wealthy before colonization
then it is not fair to blame colonization for its current poverty. It is
possible that colonization might then have made it more difficult for Africa
to advance and this is the cause for the current lack of progress. If this
was true than the most colonized African countries would be the poorest.
This is not the case.
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- The least colonized country in Africa is Ethiopia. This
country was only a colony from 1936 to 1941. That's about as long as France
was occupied by Hitler. This history of independence has not produced economic
success. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world with a per
capita income of $600. Even among African countries Ethiopia is poor. The
one country whose culture is most similar to Ethiopia is Eritrea. The fact
that these two countries hate each other does not disprove their similarity.
Eritrea was a colony from 1890 to 1941. Eritrea's per capita GNP is $1,000.
Being more colonized than its neighbor did not make Eritrea poorer. The
second least colonized country in Africa is Liberia which became independent
in 1847 and it is now the worst country in Africa, maybe the world, and
the World Bank does not even have an estimate as to its GNP.
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- The most 'colonized' black population in Africa has to
be that of South Africa. Determining the effect of this on income is difficult.
I have spent several days trying to find one single reference to the average
income of South African blacks and have found none. If the reader knows
of such a reference for this top secret info please email me. Even though
there are no references to what black income is there are a multitude of
references to the 7 to 1 ratio of white to black income. Regardless of
the seemingly complete absence of direct information on black income it
is possible to infer black income from other statistics. Since blacks earned
43% of all income for 2000 and are 88% of the population and average income
is $8,318 it is clear that blacks average $4,064 a year. This figure is
4 times higher than the average for Africa. It does not seem that being
the most colonized has impoverished South African blacks. They are 6.6
times richer than the least colonized blacks on the continent.
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- Namibia did not become independent until 1990 and average
income there is $5,369, though much of that goes to the 6% which is white.
Zimbabwe's bilateral declaration of independence came in 1980 and their
average income is $2,470 with a white population too tiny to change the
average figure from the figure for blacks. Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South
Africa were the last countries to decolonize and they are all richer than
the rest of Africa.
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- One possible explanation for why the most colonized countries
are the richest is that countries like South Africa have the most resources.
A comparison to Angola disproves that. Every year South Africa exports
$351 in natural resources per person. Every year Angola exports $450 in
natural resources per person. This great natural wealth per capita has
not helped Angola as its average income is the same $1,000 a year that
Africa as a whole averages.
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- Yet another explanation is that the whites used up all
the resources before they left. Oil was first discovered in Nigeria in
1956. In 1960 the British set the country free. This was the same year
the first oil well was dug. Since 1970 Nigeria has made more than $280
billion from oil, or $9 billion a year. Nigeria's average income is the
same as the average for Africa: $1,000 a year. Botswana received independence
in 1966. Diamonds were first discovered one year later and the country
now exports $1,100 worth of diamonds per person every year. The whites
did not use up all the resources. Sub-Saharan Africa is still the most
resource rich area of its size in the world.
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- One of the most emotional issues regarding colonization
was the taking of land to be given to white farmers. This is often stated
as a cause of Africa's current poverty. The facts don't support this. The
two countries in which land was most thoroughly alienated from the black
population were Zimbabwe and South Africa and as I've already stated black
incomes in those countries are far above average. The most useful comparison
on the land issue is the one between Uganda and Kenya. Both were originally
a single administrative unit in the British Empire and remained under closely
related administration after they were split into separate colonies. In
Kenya so much prime farmland was given to whites that the region the farms
were in became known as "the White Highlands." Uganda was different.
Despite an abundance of prime farmland the British authorities decided
to let the Africans keep their land and made many efforts to encourage
their farming efforts. Kenya still has many white farmers and currently
has an average income of $1,600 while Uganda has an average income of $1,060
despite doubling its economy in 14 years under Yoweri Museveni. There is
the additional issue of Uganda's unhappy history, which certainly is no
better than Kenya's or almost any other African country's.
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- One example which illustrates the real impact of colonization
is that of Zaire. This country has since gone through a name change, but
I find Zaire more convenient. European colonists uniformly believed that
the more they educated blacks the harder it was to maintain control. While
they all believed in this, only Belgium was willing to act on it. High
school education and beyond was intentionally not given to the blacks of
the Belgian Congo. While some got around this most did not. Zaire is now
one of the poorest countries in Africa with an average income of $731 despite
an abundance of natural resources. If you look closely you will see that
the current relative position of African countries is related to how much
benefit the colonial authorities produced, not how little damage they did
or what resources they have. While it is true that the Belgians could have
provided a better education, without them the Zairians would have received
none.
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- Were getting to the end of the list of reasons why colonialism
is supposed to the cause of African poverty. One other explanation for
why colonization caused Africa's current poverty is that the admittedly
absurd borders of today's Africa bear no resemblance to ethnic realities.
Unfortunately for this theory, Rwanda and Burundi have the same borders
they had hundreds of years before the white man came. We all know how that
turned out. Another explanation is that the constant warfare of modern
African history was caused by colonialism and this in turn causes poverty.
Tanzania has had a peaceful existence after independence and is one of
the poorest African countries with a per capita GNP of $478. Zimbabwe fought
a 14 year war against white rule and is one of the richest African countries.
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- I am not writing this to engage in idle Africa bashing.
My Africa bashing has a purpose. African poverty is real and needs real
solutions. It is not impossible for economies to do well on this continent.
It is not under some magic spell. When whites ran Rhodesia and South Africa
those countries did well. Since Yoweri Museveni took over Uganda in 1986
the country has grown at an average rate of 6% a year. From 1995 to 1999
it was 7.3% and this occurred in a country which lacks the massive oil
or mineral deposits that so many other African countries have. Museveni
is not merely a successful economic leader. At the same time that he doubled
the size of the economy he has cut the AIDS rate in half. He was also the
single most important figure in stopping the Rwandan genocide at a time
when France was actively helping the genocidists and the UN was holding
its gavel back in New York. It's been proven that African countries can
prosper. Saying that they can't until the imaginary damage of colonialism
is removed is just an excuse for not trying.
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- http://www.success-and-culture.net/articles/underdeveloped.shtml
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